


Dinner and a Movie

by PrairieDawn



Series: Changesverse [2]
Category: Star Trek: The Original Series
Genre: Awkward Conversations, Consent Negotiation, Cooking Fluff, Fluff, Gratuitous Eric Carle Reference, Gratuitous Princess Bride Reference, Kissing, Light Angst, M/M, Multi, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-29
Updated: 2019-04-29
Packaged: 2020-02-09 19:20:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18644461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PrairieDawn/pseuds/PrairieDawn
Summary: Set shortly after the epilogue to Everything Stays and in that 'Verse.Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are on Janus 4 aiding Horta  in negotiating sharing her planet with the local mining colony.  The first batch of her babies have hatched, and Kirk and Spock have decided to make good on Spock's offer to discuss certain matters with McCoy.Happy Birthday Gryff!





	Dinner and a Movie

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GryffindorBookworm](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GryffindorBookworm/gifts).



> OK so, it is not entirely necessary to have read Everything Stays before you read this, but two things you really need to know.
> 
> 1\. It's established Spirk (I know, duh)  
> 2\. In this AU, the Tantalus device did a very specific kind of brain damage to Kirk that left him with significant telepathic abilities (somewhat stronger than Spock's) which he has been adjusting to for the last few months.

“You gave her the same voice as the ship’s computer,” Leonard mused from his perch on an outcropping of stone near Horta—her given name was to become the species name—while Lieutenant Uhura adjusted the settings on the silicon based life form’s vocoder. His rebreather mask itched, but if he took it off, he would set a bad example for Uhura. The acid fumes from the silicon based beings’ tunneling secretions would damage human lungs after extended exposure at high concentrations. 

Uhura shrugged. “She liked it best of the options. We’re ready. You can go ahead, doctor.”

Leonard slid gingerly down, planting his feet between the milling armadillo sized babies. “All right, ma’am, I’m going to have a look at your wound, see how the bandage is holding.”

“Yes,” the flat, feminine voice replied.

“Turn ninety degrees to your left.” There was a longish pause, and a brief movement to the right, but she eventually turned so that he could see her injury clearly. He ran the tricorder over it, sent the data to be combined with his previous scans of her injury.

“Gratitude to humans for assisting new children. I can not follow everywhere.”

“We’re happy to help,” Leonard said. The ceramacrete bandage was beginning to separate from the wound on one side, but with no point of reference, he was unsure whether it was being naturally pushed aside by the healing tissue or whether it needed replacement. “Any pain?”

“Little. Better than before.” She rumbled beneath him, and he felt the vibration from head to toe. Her sonar could be unsettlingly powerful at close range. “Want I could give picture.”

Leonard wished she could “give picture” too. His instruments were woefully inadequate to determine the extent of her healing process, and heaven forbid she develop some kind of silicon based infection. “I sent Jim and Spock to rest. Giving pictures is hard work for them. They were tired.”

The being startled beneath him in what might have been alarm. “Will they die?”

“No, no. That’s why they keep me around. To keep them from working themselves into an early grave.” He thought that through, suspecting the translator wasn’t up to such complex ideas. “I tell them to sleep and eat, and not work too much. All right, I’ll examine you again tomorrow. Tell Uhura if the pain gets worse.”

“Move carefully,” Horta said as he started to turn away. He found his feet were trapped in position by a crowd of Horta’s little offspring. They didn’t look much like their mother straight out of the egg. They were a bit bigger than an armadillo and similarly armored, a deep charcoal color with ruddy undertones and a generous peachy-gold sensory fringe wherever they touched the ground. Each one was poised to spill concentrated aqua regia in the event he stepped on a bit of fringe. He was on his fourth pair of boots this week. 

He was supposed to be meeting with the errant manchildren shortly anyway. For dinner. Good. He could cajole the both of them to eat something. He hoped the two of them were napping right now. Actually napping, with their eyes closed and their pants on, but he doubted it. He picked his way on tiptoes through a sea of iridescent babies who had the cat like habit of rubbing up against his legs so he would stumble and wondered if they found his clumsiness funny. Once he was free of the cluster and only followed by two of the little rugbugs, he made his way down the polished smooth floor of the cave to an elevator, held the door for the little ones--who would as soon burn a hole through the door if not indulged--and punched the button to the upper level quarters. He pulled off his mask, finally, the cooler air a blessed relief against his sweaty nose, cheeks, and chin.

Each baby had a ceramic plate affixed to its carapace on which its name was engraved in Standard characters and in which a tracking device had been embedded. According to their nametags, he was hosting Kilas and Rahta. They scooted down the tiled hall behind him until he arrived at the suite Jim and Spock were sharing. His own room was next door. Room 48 was emitting crackles, squeaks, and suspiciously human giggles. He pressed the comm button. “McCoy here.”

“Come in, Bones!” Jim shouted cheerfully. “Watch your step, though.”

“I can’t imagine why,” Leonard groused. Kilas and Rahta greeted the babies on the suite’s sitting room floor by bumping their front ends together. Only about twelve hundred had hatched in this first batch, but that was plenty. It was fortunate that, small acid leaks and minor injuries aside, the rugbugs were a well behaved lot, or he’d have been a lot busier in the colony infirmary. 

“Now he wasn’t hungry any more—and he wasn’t a little caterpillar any more.” Jim sat on the couch, crosslegged, with a fire blanket laid across his lap. A baby, he’d bet good money it was Naraht, nestled in the hollow of his lap, while a dozen more ranged around the floor. Two human children perhaps two and four years old perched on kitchen chairs at the edge of the group. “He was a big, fat caterpillar,” Jim said slowly, enunciating every word. He acknowledged McCoy with a nod and a raised finger, then continued reading off his PADD. “He built a small house, called a cocoon, around himself.”

The fat silvery cocoon on its brilliant green leaf floated in front of his mind’s eye. Jim was projecting to the whole bunch of them, then. Leonard dropped into the chair opposite. As long as he was eating and he hadn’t given himself a headache, Leonard would indulge the reckless fool. The book was almost finished anyway. He started to work off his boots, but decided to wait until the rugbugs could be sent on their way for the evening.

“Then he nibbled a hole in the cocoon, pushed his way out, and he was a beautiful butterfly,” Jim finished. “All right, off you go.” He chivvied the pack of them out the door, the human children last. The older one stopped politely in the doorway. “Thank you for the story, Mr. Jim.”

“Thank you for visiting, Del.” He stood in the doorway until the kids were collected into the quarters across the hall, then yawned. “Spock’s in the other room, meditating.”

“One of these days I’m going to come in here and your brains are going to be leaking out of your ears. And also, what possessed you to put that kid on your lap? I’m not sure a fire blanket would protect your precious jewels if he decided to leak.”

“At least I used a blanket.” He folded the blanket neatly and tucked it into a low cabinet, then turned to Leonard with one of those considering sort of looks that usually preceded one of his less advisable schemes. “Care for a drink?”

“Not tonight, no. I’m on duty. And you shouldn’t be drinking either,” he admonished out of habit.

“Just a second.” Jim crossed the sitting room to rap on the bedroom door. “Spock. Bones is here.” There was a muffled response from the bedroom.

Jim flung himself onto the couch. “We wanted to take you to dinner.”

Spock emerged from the bedroom, still in uniform, though without his boots. He stepped carefully around a few dark smudges on the floor. “Unfortunately, between the immediate need to complete negotiations and the additional demands on your time, we have not been able to do so.”

“No restaurants on this rock to speak of either,” Leonard noted. “Translator’s up and running. Uhura tells me it will be more accurate the more Horta uses it, but I can tell she’s frustrated. You two have thoroughly spoiled her.” He scuffed at one of the burns on the carpet with a booted toe. “And the kids.”

Spock took a shaker of white powder off the breakfast bar and sprinkled a little over each small acid stain. “The Captain lacks the patience to delay discussing certain matters with you until the completion of this mission.” He settled onto the couch next to Jim, though the two of them left a slight space between.

Jim leaned forward on the arm of the couch, putting on that twinkly eyed smile he hadn’t tried on Leonard in near a decade. “You’ve been flirting with my bondmate,” he said, pushing his lip out into a slight pout. 

“You’ve been flirting with a rock.”

“A rock star,” Jim corrected, teasing.

Leonard countered, “Besides, _I_ wasn’t flirting. That was just my genuine country charm.” He was warming to the game a little, though he had a suspicion the conversation was going to get serious in a hot minute.

“You haven’t charmed Spock or me in years. I’m talking about your contrary attitude.”

“I don’t have a contrary attitude. I’m just never wrong.” He really needed a drink to hold. Lines like that came across so much better with a shot of bourbon to wave around.

“Bones.”

And there it was. That shift in tone he both was and wasn’t waiting for. His heart jolted in his chest. Damn his anxiety if it didn’t always make what ought to be a good thing hard. “Yeah, Jim?”

“You’ve had to deal with so much in the last few months, and you’ve always been there for Spock and me when we needed you to hold us together, or to give us a swift kick in the pants.” Leonard opened his mouth to speak, to remind them that holding them together, sometimes literally, was his goddam job, but Jim held up a hand to stop him before even the first word got out. Jim turned to look at Spock a fraction of a second before the Vulcan started to speak. Leonard had grown so used to that behavior that he hardly even found it spooky anymore.

“You have put considerable effort into overcoming your own prejudices and fears in order that we, and especially Jim, could grow into his changed circumstances. What we are would not be possible without you. And yet, we have neither asked nor offered what we most desire.”

“And what might that be,” he said, his mouth suddenly dry.

Jim continued for them, “We don’t want you cheering us on from the sidelines anymore. We want you. With us.”

He had been mostly sure something like this was coming since the last time the three of them had melded for work just a few days ago, and Spock had damn near propositioned him over a sick Horta and a bucket of ceramacrete, but he’d honestly thought the two of them would change their minds once they got their heads screwed back on straight. “I’ve tried being a throuple before. Till my wife decided I was just a third wheel.”

Spock slid to the far end of the couch, leaving a space between himself and Jim. “Please sit here.”

He almost said no. He almost told them they could say what they had to say from where they were, thank you very much, but he didn’t. He got up and squished himself in between two damn telepaths on a couch that was not sized for three grown men of any persuasion. He turned to Spock first. “I thought you had to be compatible—up here—to, I dunno, be a couple with someone. We’re not alike at all.”

“I beg to differ,” Jim said, and this close Leonard could feel as well as see his amusement.

“Jim and I are compatible in one way, you with the two of us in another. Jim and I are, to use a musical analogy, well matched voices. We produce a close harmony, two voices that sound as one. You are counterpoint, different from us in precisely the right way to add depth and scope to the song, as it were. You are uncompromising in your ethics, you are given to brilliant scientific leaps, and you possess a deep joy in living that at times we miss, as we are too focused on our goals.”

“You flatter me,” Leonard said.

“I speak only the truth.”

“I don’t want you to try to squeeze me into your relationship out of some sense of reciprocity.”

“I don’t want to listen to Spock pining after you all the time,” Jim said.

Spock, he swore, blushed. “You have—beautiful hands, doctor.”

“I’m kinda partial to your eyes,” Jim added.

Leonard’s face was so warm he was sure he was blushing to his hairline. He covered his face with his hands, denying Jim his favorite feature while, he supposed, displaying Spock’s to advantage. “Thought you weren’t going to miss playing the field, Jim.”

“I’m not playing.”

“I won’t say I never thought about one or the other of you from time to time,” he said, sticking his toes in to test the waters.

“We know,” Jim said.

“You didn’t have to say that.” He found himself chuckling. “Dumbass.”

Leonard realized, just then, that despite the compliments and talk and teasing, both of them were sitting very still, maybe even a little stiffly, on either side of him. And the fizzy static that accompanied their presence was flattened, softened. They were both shielding hard, giving him space, waiting for him to make a move rather than push the issue. He scrubbed his sweaty hands on his pants, then raised two fingers in Spock’s direction. “Damfool way to kiss somebody if you ask me.”

Cool fingers met his, that flattened static went liquid, flowed around him and he had no idea whether the sudden delight he felt was his own. An “Oh!” escaped his lips, and in the instant they were parted a _May I?_ traced its way into his thoughts, and on the heels of his _Yes!_ Jim’s warm lips met his, too briefly and chastely for his taste, so that he sat up to chase them, caught Jim around the back with one arm, and planted one on him properly. Arousal, his or Jim’s, possibly all three of theirs, given the proximity, sparked between them in the few moments before his body became vague and distant. Jim broke off the kiss, leaving Leonard breathless and dizzy.

“I believe we would be more comfortable if we were to retire to the bedroom,” Spock said, rising from the couch and turning his hand so that it clasped Leonard’s, the fingers laced with his. Where Jim felt like Niagara Falls, Spock’s touch was gentler, more controlled and less overwhelming, a bit like being immersed in champagne. Not that he’d ever been immersed in champagne, but he’d gotten quite a bit of practice straining metaphors to the breaking point since Jim’s crisis.

Leonard used the hand as leverage to pull himself up. “For once I’m inclined to agree with you.” He led the way, dragging Spock along by their clasped hands, Jim following close behind. Leonard found himself sandwiched between them, Spock’s hands laced through his, Jim pressing kisses into the back of his neck and for a moment he thought he would dissolve with the intensity of it all, and at once, he felt his mood shift. He was losing control, moved along by desires he wasn’t sure were his own and _STOP!_ he fairly shouted and Spock and Jim both stepped back, moved a couple of meters away, Jim walking around front so that Leonard could see him, flushed and already with his shirt off and when had he managed that?

I’m sorry, Leonard almost said. “Thank you.” He took a deep breath. “God it’s been a long time. A really long time.” He made sure he caught both of their eyes before he spoke, took a moment to collect his thoughts. “I want to do this. I want to do—us. I really do. But this is too fast. I need—” He wasn’t sure. The two of them perched on the end of the bed, Jim with his arms crossed and biting at the corner of his lip, a reliable tell for when he was worried. “I need to be an equal partner. And to do that I need to feel like I’m in control of—this.” He waved his hand toward the bed.

“Can you give me time? I mean, we can date, or court all you want, everything else, but let me decide when I’m ready to take this step. After I’ve had time to think it through.”

“Of course,” Spock said, the wrinkle between his brows smoothing. His shoulders dropped, and he released the hold he had on Jim’s arm.

Leonard walked deliberately over to the bed to sit beside them, near the pillow. “I would like to stay. Maybe we could do something—else?” He tried to come up with something. Spock opened his mouth and he knew, he just _knew_ what was about to come out of it. “Not paperwork. Definitely not paperwork.” Jim turned toward him, his own eyes lighting up. Leonard cut him off as well. “And I can just guess what you want to do. Give it a rest for a night before your head explodes.”

Jim arched his eyebrow in an excessively good imitation of Spock. “We still need to eat dinner. I was going to suggest we could make use of the kitchenette in here, maybe you could show us a favorite recipe.”

Leonard gave the suggestion a little thought. It was late afternoon, so he hadn’t yet eaten, and Jim, well, the way Jim ate lately…“There is a little grocery on the level below. I make a mean chili, and corn fritters. We could follow that up with rhubarb pie.”

“That sounds like an excellent plan, Leonard,” Spock agreed.

“Let me get dressed and we’ll all go.” Jim hooked his shirt off the floor and tugged it back on over his head.

“We move in together I’m not picking up after you,” Leonard said. They picked their way across the carpet again and pulled their boots back on. “And don’t you two get into one of those funks where you think you made a horrible mistake and don’t talk to me. I’m interested, all right?” 

He pivoted toward Jim to offer a kiss, which Jim collected with interest, this time adding a teasing swipe across Leonard’s teeth and the roof of his mouth with his tongue. He had that sense again, of being captured by a roaring waterfall, but before he could chafe against it Jim broke off the kiss. “I think I understand.”

Leonard felt his own eyes narrow in suspicion. “That’s your conspiracy voice, mister. And don’t think I don’t know you’re having a whole other conversation behind my back. Spock over there’s been awfully quiet.”

Jim chuckled. “Guilty as charged.”

“Well, stop it.” Jim opened his mouth to protest, and Leonard amended, “At least try not to be so obvious about it. Y’all ready to go?” Spock nodded, and Jim gestured to the door. Leonard led the way out, a thousand thoughts crowding into his head, demanding his attention, but despite his current state of discombobulation, he knew he was doing the right thing. They really were good together, all three of them. It wasn’t going to be an easy dance to learn, he thought, remembering Jim and Spock tripping over each other’s feet trying to manage a simple box step not so many months ago, but he was sure that, given time and a little practice, they would get it right.

*

“Watch your elbow, would you?” Leonard snipped, while stirring the chili. There was a reason the little bit of counter and breakfast bar, with its undersized appliances, was called a kitchenette rather than a kitchen. 

Jim picked up the bowl of fritter batter and took a step back, grinning. The chili was ready to simmer, so Leonard set the heating element at the bottom of the pot to keep the chili gently bubbling and set it on the heat proof section of the counter. They’d put Spock on pie duty, as he claimed his mother had educated him in the proper making of pie crust when he was a child, and he remembered how to do so perfectly. 

Leonard turned to lean against the counter, watching Jim sneak around behind Spock, bowl still in hand, to smack him smartly on the behind. The Vulcan’s eyes widened, accentuating the bright white smudge of flour on his forehead and left eyebrow. Bones snatched the fritter batter from Jim. “You want to see how to fry these?”

“Oh, yes!” Jim said, and samba’d over to the cooktop, wiggling that obnoxious ass of his all the way.

“Oil’s already hot. You want to drop spoonfuls about the size of an egg,” he took an example scoop and dropped it into the pan, where it popped and sizzled, “and spread it out just a little with the spoon.” He flicked at the blob of batter so it flattened slightly. “Don’t overdo it.” He handed the spoon off to Jim. “Give it a try.”

Unlike Jim, he would never engage in touchy feely shenanigans in front of a hot cooktop. He leaned in to watch Jim drop a slightly too large measure of batter into the pan, but made himself refrain from commenting. Jim spread it out, the batter sticking to the spoon and lifting a little out of the pan so he had to shake it off. “That good?”

Leonard nodded. “You can fit two more fritters in there.” He turned back to Spock. “Need a hand with the filling?”

“I am capable of following a recipe, Doctor,” Spock said, archly.

“Is that how you’re going to be?” Leonard teased. Spock had pressed the bottom crust into the pie pan and was pouring the filling. Leonard cut the remaining pie crust, already flattened, into finger-wide strips, then set down the knife as Spock set down the bowl of filling. Spock met his eyes, curious. His hands were well dusted with flour from kneading and rolling. The two of them seemed to have made an unspoken rule that they would accept, enthusiastically, any contact Leonard offered, but neither would initiate. Leonard flipped Spock’s hand over so it rested palm, up, then drew his first two fingers from wrist to fingertips, eliciting a contented sigh and leaving Leonard with giddy sparkles in the back of his head. Spock’s fingers quirked into a hook, and Leonard allowed his own to be caught for a fraction of a second before he got to work weaving the strips of dough over the top of the pie.

“Hey, when do I flip these?” Jim asked.

Leonard turned back around. The fritters were just turning from golden to brown at the edges. “Now would be good.” He supervised Jim for a second, carefully keeping his distance. Hot oil and vertigo did not mix. Spock tucked the pie into the tiny convection oven built into the breakfast nook, while Jim put in a second batch of fritters. McCoy dished up the chili.

Once the fritters were done, Jim divided them up. Leonard garnished his with red onion and a little sour cream, Jim with more red onion and a nearly obscene amount of sour cream, but with his metabolism, he could afford it. They’d made the chili vegetarian of course, with extra beans and some soy protein for texture. Leonard shook on a generous helping of tabasco, then passed the bottle to Spock, who shook on a little to be polite. “Oh, Leonard!” Jim fairly moaned around a bite of fritter. “I’ve been eating ship food for so long I forgot how good real food tastes. It’s like…ummmm…” He stuffed a slightly too large bite of chili in, then made contented noises better suited to the bedroom than the kitchen. Mission accomplished.

Leonard tucked into his own meal, unable to wipe the smile off his face.

“I was unaware that you were such an accomplished cook, Doctor,” Spock noted, toward the end of the meal, as Leonard was pulling the pie out to cool.

“The first time he cooked for me, I swear I asked him to marry me,” Jim said, laughing.

“He did, it’s true. I turned him down, of course,” Leonard said.

“Of course,” Spock echoed.

Leonard crept up behind Jim to squeeze his waist right where he knew he was most ticklish, and was rewarded when the younger man curled up to protect the sensitive areas. Jim turned around to face him, one knee slotting in between is legs almost by accident. “May I kiss you, my young gentleman?” Leonard said, mock formally.

“Why yes I think you may,” Jim returned. He did the little nervous thing again, folding his arms and chewing at his lip. Leonard bent down to graze Jim’s lips with his own, then, made bold, deepened the kiss to lick lightly along the inside of Jim’s lips, the roaring waterfall swallowing up all sensation and he felt this sideways sort of slide and found his feet again, their feet maybe, he wasn’t sure if he was standing or sitting, or if he was the one roving the inside of Jim’s mouth with his tongue or vice versa. Warmth kindled in his groin and he pressed closer, or one of them did. Before he was even fully aware that he was getting a case of the nerves again Jim pulled away to look at him, pupils wide, and lips puffed and pink. “There’s a trick to it.”

“So I gather.” He got up to cut pie. That was, he realized, the crux of it. The two of of them swam in that ocean of mind they created naturally, expertly, hardly even thinking of the difficulty any more, and Leonard—didn’t. And much as he trusted the two of them implicitly, they couldn’t have a physical relationship without that mind voodoo, and again he stopped himself, he promised he’d stop using that word. They literally couldn’t, and Leonard didn’t think he could bear being carried. “So, you think I could learn how to do that?” he cut sideways with his hand, mimicking that slipping sideways feeling.

“I see no reason why you could not, Leonard. It will simply take time,” Spock said.

Leonard passed out slices of pie. “I’d like to stay the night, if you two don’t mind,” he said. “I feel like you’ll work yourselves up in to a tizzy thinking I’m going to run away.” He took a bite of pie, and was not disappointed. Spock really did know his way around a pie crust. To be honest with himself, he was a little worried that in the quiet and dark of his own room, he’d forget what he loved about the two of them just long enough to let his fears get a solid grip. He didn’t trust future Leonard as far as he could throw him. “On the couch,” he clarified, belatedly.

“As you wish, Leonard,” Spock said.

“Oh, can we watch The Princess Bride?” Jim said around a bite of pie.

“I am amenable, as long as you do not object to my reading at the same time.”

“As long as I can curl up with you on the couch.”

Leonard rolled his eyes, but he was faintly envious. “I haven’t seen it,” he admitted.

“You’ve never seen the Princess Bride?” Jim exclaimed, pressing a hand to his heart dramatically. “Inconceivable! This oversight must be remedied!”

Spock quietly collected the dishes, while Jim dragged Leonard to the couch. Leonard was acutely aware he was being wooed, and wooed with such delicacy as if he were a maiden in a Regency era romance novel. He curled up next to the armrest, not being one to sit properly in chairs. Jim took the middle, but once the ancient motion picture flickered to life on the holoscreen, he wrapped himself around Spock, who took out a data pad to read. There were a scant couple of centimeters between them on the couch. Leonard scooted over just enough to close the gap, so they were touching through two layers of clothes, Jim’s body heat bleeding through where their backs and legs touched. He felt Jim wriggle in next to him, getting comfortable. He was mouthing the words, clearly having memorized the movie, and Leonard could _hear him_ through even that limited contact. “I see you still talk during movies,” he said.

“Indeed,” Spock intoned. 

The first time Westley said “As you wish,” Leonard sat up and turned toward Spock, who raised his eyes from his reading to quirk an eyebrow at him. The second time, he found his cheeks starting to heat. And the third time, the third time he realized that Spock had taken to using that turn of phrase quite some time ago with him, and he hadn’t even noticed. Sneaky bastard. Jim clearly caught the exact moment Leonard realized what Spock had been up to, because he laughed aloud and punched Spock on the arm. Leonard turned back to the movie. And then Westley, for no good reason at all, died.

“What?!” Leonard said.

“Just watch the movie.”


End file.
